Europe is the world's second-smallest continent by surface area, covering about 10,180,000 square kilometres (3,930,000 sq mi) or 2% of the Earth's surface and about 6.8% of its land area. Of Europe's approximately 50 countries, Russia is by far the largest by both area and population, taking up 40% of the continent (although the country has territory in both Europe and Asia), while Vatican City is the smallest. Europe is the third-most populous continent after Asia and Africa, with a population of 739–743 million or about 11% of the world's population.[6]

The use of the term "Europe" has developed gradually throughout history.[24][25] In antiquity, the Greek historian Herodotus mentioned that the world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa), with the Nile and the River Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered the River Don, rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia.[26] Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don.[27] The Book of Jubilees described the continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar, separating it from North Africa, to the Don, separating it from Asia.[28]

A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century, signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast with Byzantium and Islam, and limited to northern Iberia, the British Isles, France, Christianized western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy.[29] The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance: "Europa" often figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar, Alcuin.[30] This division—as much cultural as geographical—was used until the Late Middle Ages, when it was challenged by the Age of Discovery.[31][32][why?] The problem of redefining Europe was finally resolved in 1730 when, instead of waterways, the Swedish geographer and cartographer von Strahlenberg proposed the Ural Mountains as the most significant eastern boundary, a suggestion that found favour in Russia and throughout Europe.[33]

Europe is now generally defined by geographers as the western peninsula of Eurasia, with its boundaries marked by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the far east are usually taken to be the Urals, the Ural River, and the Caspian Sea; to the southeast, including the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.[34]

Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass, hence Iceland is generally considered to be part of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned to North America. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences. Cyprus is closest to Anatolia (or Asia Minor), but is usually considered part of Europe both culturally and politically and currently is a member state of the EU. Malta was considered an island of North Africa for centuries.[35]

The geographic boundary drawn between Europe and Asia in 1730 follows no international boundaries. As a result, attempts to organize Europe along political or economic lines have resulted in uses of the name in a geopolitically limiting way[36] to refer only to the 28 member states of the European Union. Conversely, Europe has also been used in a very expansive way by the Council of Europe which has 47 member countries,[37] some of which territorially over-reach the Ural and Bosphorus lines to include all of Russia and Turkey. In addition, people in the British Isles may refer to "continental" or "mainland" Europe as Europe.[38]

Whatever the origin of the name of the mythological figure, Εὐρώπη is first used as a geographical term in the 6th century BC, by Greek geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus. Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni) in the Caucasus, a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BC.[45] But the convention received by the Middle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of the Roman era used by Roman era authors such as Posidonius,[46]Strabo[47] and Ptolemy,[48] who took the Tanais (the modern Don River) as the boundary. The term "Europe" is first used for a cultural sphere in the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century. From that time, the term designated the sphere of influence of the Western Church, as opposed to both the Eastern Orthodox churches and to the Islamic world. The modern convention, enlarging the area of "Europe" somewhat to the east and the southeast, develops in the 19th century.

Most major world languages use words derived from "Europa" to refer to the "continent" (peninsula). Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu (歐洲); a similar Chinese-derived term Ōshū(欧州?) is also sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union, Ōshū Rengō(欧州連合?), despite the katakanaYōroppa(ヨーロッパ?) being more commonly used. However, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan (land of the Franks) is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa.[49]

During the Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire fell under the control of various tribes. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe respectively.[72] Eventually the Frankish tribes were united under Clovis I.[73]Charlemagne, a Frankish king of the Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed "Holy Roman Emperor" by the Pope in 800. This led in 962 to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe.[74]

Middle Ages

The economic growth of Europe around the year 1000, together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes, made possible the development of major commercial routes along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. In this context, the growing independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading role in the European scene.

The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure: the nobility and the clergy. Feudalism developed in France in the Early Middle Ages and soon spread throughout Europe.[88] A struggle for influence between the nobility and the monarchy in England led to the writing of the Magna Carta and the establishment of a parliament.[89] The primary source of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church. Through monasteries and cathedral schools, the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe.[88]

In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Pechenegs and the Cuman-Kipchaks, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north and temporarily halted the expansion of the Rus' state to the south and east.[92] Like many other parts of Eurasia, these territories were overrun by the Mongols.[93] The invaders, who became known as Tatars, were mostly Turkic-speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty. They established the state of the Golden Horde with headquarters in Crimea, which later adopted Islam as a religion and ruled over modern-day southern and central Russia for more than three centuries.[94][95] After the collapse of Mongol dominions, the first Romanian states (principalities) emerged in the 14th century: Moldova and Walachia. Previously, these territories were under the successive control of Pechenegs and Cumans.[96] From the 12th to the 15th centuries, the Grand Duchy of Moscow grew from a small principality under Mongol rule to the largest state in Europe, overthrowing the Mongols in 1480 and eventually becoming the Tsardom of Russia. The state was consolidated under Ivan III the Great and Ivan the Terrible, steadily expanding to the east and south over the next centuries.

The Great Famine of 1315–1317 was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages.[97] The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population of France was reduced by half.[98][99] Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines,[100] and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period.[101] Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by the Black Death, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of the European population at the time.[102]

The plague had a devastating effect on Europe's social structure; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353). It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increased persecution of Jews, foreigners, beggars and lepers.[103] The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until the 18th century.[104] During this period, more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe.[105]

Political intrigue within the Church in the mid-14th century caused the Western Schism. During this forty-year period, two popes—one in Avignon and one in Rome—claimed rulership over the Church. Although the schism was eventually healed in 1417, the papacy's spiritual authority had suffered greatly.[114]

The Church's power was further weakened by the Protestant Reformation (1517–1648), initially sparked by the works of German theologian Martin Luther, an attempt to start a reform within the Church. The Reformation also damaged the Holy Roman Emperor's influence, as German princes became divided between Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths.[115] This eventually led to the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), which crippled the Holy Roman Empire and devastated much of Germany, killing between 25 and 40 percent of its population.[116] In the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia, France rose to predominance within Europe.[117]

The 17th century in southern, central and eastern Europe was a period of general decline.[118] Central and Eastern Europe experienced more than 150 famines in a 200-year period between 1501 to 1700.[119] From the 15th to 18th centuries, when the disintegrating khanates of the Golden Horde were conquered by Russia, Tatars from the Crimean Khanate frequently raided Eastern Slavic lands to capture slaves.[120] The Battle of Vienna in 1683 broke the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe, and marked the political hegemony of the Habsburg dynasty in central Europe. The Nogai Horde and Kazakh Khanate had frequently raided the Slavic-speaking areas of Russia, Ukraine and Poland for at least a hundred years until the Russian expansion and conquest of most of northern Eurasia (i.e. Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia).

The Renaissance and the New Monarchs marked the start of an Age of Discovery, a period of exploration, invention, and scientific development.[121] Among the great figures of the Western scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries were Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Isaac Newton.[122] According to Peter Barrett, "It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe of the 17th century (towards the end of the Renaissance), introducing a new understanding of the natural world."[106] In the 15th century, Portugal and Spain, two of the greatest naval powers of the time, took the lead in exploring the world.[123][124]Christopher Columbus reached the New World in 1492 and Vasco da Gama opened the ocean route to the East in 1498, and soon after the Spanish and Portuguese began establishing colonial empires in the Americas and Asia.[125] France, the Netherlands and England soon followed in building large colonial empires with vast holdings in Africa, the Americas, and Asia.

The Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain in the last part of the 18th century and spread throughout Europe. The invention and implementation of new technologies resulted in rapid urban growth, mass employment, and the rise of a new working class.[139] Reforms in social and economic spheres followed, including the first laws on child labour, the legalisation of trade unions,[140] and the abolition of slavery.[141] In Britain, the Public Health Act of 1875 was passed, which significantly improved living conditions in many British cities.[142] Europe's population increased from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900.[143] The last major famine recorded in Western Europe, the Irish Potato Famine, caused death and mass emigration of millions of Irish people.[144] In the 19th century, 70 million people left Europe in migrations to various European colonies abroad and to the United States.[145]

In 1933, Hitler became the leader of Germany and began to work towards his goal of building Greater Germany. Germany re-expanded and took back the Saarland and Rhineland in 1935 and 1936. In 1938, Austria became a part of Germany following the Anschluss. Later that year, following the Munich Agreement signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy, Germany annexed the Sudetenland, which was a part of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans, and in early 1939, the remainder of Czechoslovakia was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, controlled by Germany, and the Slovak Republic. At the time, Britain and France preferred a policy of appeasement.

With tensions mounting between Germany and Poland over the future of Danzig, the Germans turned to the Soviets, and signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which allowed the Soviets to invade the Baltic states and parts of Poland and Romania. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, prompting France and the United Kingdom to declare war on Germany on 3 September, opening the European Theatre of World War II.[163][164] The Soviet invasion of Poland started on 17 September and Poland fell soon thereafter. On 24 September, the Soviet Union attacked the Baltic countries and later, Finland. The British hoped to land at Narvik and send troops to aid Finland, but their primary objective in the landing was to encircle Germany and cut the Germans off from Scandinavian resources. Around the same time, Germany moved troops into Denmark. The Phoney War continued.

World War I and especially World War II diminished the eminence of Western Europe in world affairs. After World War II the map of Europe was redrawn at the Yalta Conference and divided into two blocs, the Western countries and the communist Eastern bloc, separated by what was later called by Winston Churchill an "Iron Curtain". The United States and Western Europe established the NATO alliance and later the Soviet Union and Central Europe established the Warsaw Pact.[175]

The two new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, became locked in a fifty-year-long Cold War, centred on nuclear proliferation. At the same time decolonisation, which had already started after World War I, gradually resulted in the independence of most of the European colonies in Asia and Africa.[21] In the 1980s the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Solidarity movement in Poland accelerated the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the end of the Cold War. Germany was reunited, after the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the maps of Central and Eastern Europe were redrawn once more.[161]

Geography

Europe is a peninsula that makes up the western fifth of the Eurasian landmass.[34] It has a higher ratio of coast to landmass than any other continent or subcontinent.[179] Its maritime borders consist of the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas to the south.[180] Land relief in Europe shows great variation within relatively small areas. The southern regions are more mountainous, while moving north the terrain descends from the high Alps, Pyrenees, and Carpathians, through hilly uplands, into broad, low northern plains, which are vast in the east. This extended lowland is known as the Great European Plain, and at its heart lies the North German Plain. An arc of uplands also exists along the north-western seaboard, which begins in the western parts of the islands of Britain and Ireland, and then continues along the mountainous, fjord-cut spine of Norway.

Land use map of Europe with arable farmland (yellow), forest (dark green), pasture (light green), and tundra or bogs in the north (dark yellow)

This description is simplified. Sub-regions such as the Iberian Peninsula and the Italian Peninsula contain their own complex features, as does mainland Central Europe itself, where the relief contains many plateaus, river valleys and basins that complicate the general trend. Sub-regions like Iceland, Britain, and Ireland are special cases. The former is a land unto itself in the northern ocean which is counted as part of Europe, while the latter are upland areas that were once joined to the mainland until rising sea levels cut them off.

The climate is milder in comparison to other areas of the same latitude around the globe due to the influence of the Gulf Stream.[181] The Gulf Stream is nicknamed "Europe's central heating", because it makes Europe's climate warmer and wetter than it would otherwise be. The Gulf Stream not only carries warm water to Europe's coast but also warms up the prevailing westerly winds that blow across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean.

Therefore, the average temperature throughout the year of Naples is 16 °C (60.8 °F), while it is only 12 °C (53.6 °F) in New York City which is almost on the same latitude. Berlin, Germany; Calgary, Canada; and Irkutsk, in the Asian part of Russia, lie on around the same latitude; January temperatures in Berlin average around 8 °C (15 °F) higher than those in Calgary, and they are almost 22 °C (40 °F) higher than average temperatures in Irkutsk.[181] Similarly, northern parts of Scotland have a tempertate marine climate. The yearly average temperature in city of Inverness is 9.05 degrees Celsius (48.3 degrees Fahrenheit). However, Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, is on roughly the same latitude and has an average temperature of -6.5 degrees Celsius (20.3 degrees Fahrenheit), giving it a nearly subarctic climate.

Europe's most significant feature is the dichotomy between highland and mountainous Southern Europe and a vast, partially underwater, northern plain ranging from Ireland in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. These two halves are separated by the mountain chains of the Pyrenees and Alps/Carpathians. The northern plains are delimited in the west by the Scandinavian Mountains and the mountainous parts of the British Isles. Major shallow water bodies submerging parts of the northern plains are the Celtic Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea complex and Barents Sea.

The northern plain contains the old geological continent of Baltica, and so may be regarded geologically as the "main continent", while peripheral highlands and mountainous regions in the south and west constitute fragments from various other geological continents. Most of the older geology of western Europe existed as part of the ancient microcontinentAvalonia.

Geological history

The geological history of Europe traces back to the formation of the Baltic Shield (Fennoscandia) and the Sarmatian craton, both around 2.25 billion years ago, followed by the Volgo-Uralia shield, the three together leading to the East European craton (≈ Baltica) which became a part of the supercontinentColumbia. Around 1.1 billion years ago, Baltica and Arctica (as part of the Laurentia block) became joined to Rodinia, later resplitting around 550 million years ago to reform as Baltica. Around 440 million years ago Euramerica was formed from Baltica and Laurentia; a further joining with Gondwana then leading to the formation of Pangea. Around 190 million years ago, Gondwana and Laurasia split apart due to the widening of the Atlantic Ocean. Finally, and very soon afterwards, Laurasia itself split up again, into Laurentia (North America) and the Eurasian continent. The land connection between the two persisted for a considerable time, via Greenland, leading to interchange of animal species. From around 50 million years ago, rising and falling sea levels have determined the actual shape of Europe, and its connections with continents such as Asia. Europe's present shape dates to the late Tertiary period about five million years ago.[183]

Biodiversity

Having lived side-by-side with agricultural peoples for millennia, Europe's animals and plants have been profoundly affected by the presence and activities of man. With the exception of Fennoscandia and northern Russia, few areas of untouched wilderness are currently found in Europe, except for various national parks.

The main natural vegetation cover in Europe is mixed forest. The conditions for growth are very favourable. In the north, the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift warm the continent. Southern Europe could be described as having a warm, but mild climate. There are frequent summer droughts in this region. Mountain ridges also affect the conditions. Some of these (Alps, Pyrenees) are oriented east-west and allow the wind to carry large masses of water from the ocean in the interior. Others are oriented south-north (Scandinavian Mountains, Dinarides, Carpathians, Apennines) and because the rain falls primarily on the side of mountains that is oriented towards the sea, forests grow well on this side, while on the other side, the conditions are much less favourable. Few corners of mainland Europe have not been grazed by livestock at some point in time, and the cutting down of the pre-agricultural forest habitat caused disruption to the original plant and animal ecosystems.

Probably 80 to 90 percent of Europe was once covered by forest.[184] It stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Though over half of Europe's original forests disappeared through the centuries of deforestation, Europe still has over one quarter of its land area as forest, such as the taiga of Scandinavia and Russia, mixed rainforests of the Caucasus and the Cork oak forests in the western Mediterranean. During recent times, deforestation has been slowed and many trees have been planted. However, in many cases monoculture plantations of conifers have replaced the original mixed natural forest, because these grow quicker. The plantations now cover vast areas of land, but offer poorer habitats for many European forest dwelling species which require a mixture of tree species and diverse forest structure. The amount of natural forest in Western Europe is just 2–3% or less, in European Russia 5–10%. The country with the smallest percentage of forested area is Iceland (1%), while the most forested country is Finland (77%).[185]

Floristic regions of Europe and neighbouring areas, according to Wolfgang Frey and Rainer Lösch

In temperate Europe, mixed forest with both broadleaf and coniferous trees dominate. The most important species in central and western Europe are beech and oak. In the north, the taiga is a mixed spruce–pine–birch forest; further north within Russia and extreme northern Scandinavia, the taiga gives way to tundra as the Arctic is approached. In the Mediterranean, many olive trees have been planted, which are very well adapted to its arid climate; Mediterranean Cypress is also widely planted in southern Europe. The semi-arid Mediterranean region hosts much scrub forest. A narrow east-west tongue of Eurasian grassland (the steppe) extends eastwards from Ukraine and southern Russia and ends in Hungary and traverses into taiga to the north.

Glaciation during the most recent ice age and the presence of man affected the distribution of European fauna. As for the animals, in many parts of Europe most large animals and top predator species have been hunted to extinction. The woolly mammoth was extinct before the end of the Neolithic period. Today wolves (carnivores) and bears (omnivores) are endangered. Once they were found in most parts of Europe. However, deforestation and hunting caused these animals to withdraw further and further. By the Middle Ages the bears' habitats were limited to more or less inaccessible mountains with sufficient forest cover. Today, the brown bear lives primarily in the Balkan peninsula, Scandinavia, and Russia; a small number also persist in other countries across Europe (Austria, Pyrenees etc.), but in these areas brown bear populations are fragmented and marginalised because of the destruction of their habitat. In addition, polar bears may be found on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago far north of Scandinavia. The wolf, the second largest predator in Europe after the brown bear, can be found primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Balkans, with a handful of packs in pockets of Western Europe (Scandinavia, Spain, etc.).

European wild cat, foxes (especially the red fox), jackal and different species of martens, hedgehogs, different species of reptiles (like snakes such as vipers and grass snakes) and amphibians, different birds (owls, hawks and other birds of prey).

Important European herbivores are snails, larvae, fish, different birds, and mammals, like rodents, deer and roe deer, boars, and living in the mountains, marmots, steinbocks, chamois among others. A number of insects, such as the small tortoiseshell butterfly, add to the biodiversity.[188]

Political geography

Regional grouping used by the United Nations Statistics Department, which groups Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, and Turkey in Western Asia, and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.[190] According to the UN Statistics Division, the assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories by the United Nations.[191]

Regional grouping according to The World Factbook which classifies Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey as being primarily or entirely in Asia, and Cyprus as in the Middle East

The list below includes all entities falling even partially under any of the various common definitions of Europe, geographic or political. The data displayed are per sources in cross-referenced articles.

Several dependencies and similar territories with broad autonomy are also found in Europe. Note that the list does not include the constituent countries of the United Kingdom, federal states of Germany and Austria, and autonomous territories of Spain and the post-Soviet republics as well as the republic of Serbia.

European integration is the process of political, legal, economic (and in some cases social and cultural) integration of states wholly or partially in Europe. In the present day, European integration has primarily come about through the Council of Europe and European Union in Western and Central Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States in Central and Eastern Europe and most of former Soviet countries.

As a continent, the economy of Europe is currently the largest on Earth and it is the richest region as measured by assets under management with over $32.7 trillion compared to North America's $27.1 trillion in 2008.[195] In 2009 Europe remained the wealthiest region. Its $37.1 trillion in assets under management represented one-third of the world's wealth. It was one of several regions where wealth surpassed its precrisis year-end peak.[196] As with other continents, Europe has a large variation of wealth among its countries. The richer states tend to be in the West; some of the Central and Eastern European economies are still emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

There is huge disparity between many European countries in terms of their income. The richest in terms of GDP per capita is Monaco with its US$172,676 per capita (2009) and the poorest is Moldova with its GDP per capita of US$1,631 (2010).[198]Monaco is the richest country in terms of GDP per capita in the world according to the World Bank report.

Pre–1945: Industrial growth

Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism.[199] From Britain, it gradually spread throughout Europe.[200] The Industrial Revolution started in Europe, specifically the United Kingdom in the late 18th century,[201] and the 19th century saw Western Europe industrialise. Economies were disrupted by World War I but by the beginning of World War II they had recovered and were having to compete with the growing economic strength of the United States. World War II, again, damaged much of Europe's industries.

1945–1990: The Cold War

After World War II the economy of the UK was in a state of ruin,[202] and continued to suffer relative economic decline in the following decades.[203] Italy was also in a poor economic condition but regained a high level of growth by the 1950s. West Germany recovered quickly and had doubled production from pre-war levels by the 1950s.[204] France also staged a remarkable comeback enjoying rapid growth and modernisation; later on Spain, under the leadership of Franco, also recovered, and the nation recorded huge unprecedented economic growth beginning in the 1960s in what is called the Spanish miracle.[205] The majority of Central and Eastern European states came under the control of the Soviet Union and thus were members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON).[206]

The states which retained a free-market system were given a large amount of aid by the United States under the Marshall Plan. [207] The western states moved to link their economies together, providing the basis for the EU and increasing cross border trade. This helped them to enjoy rapidly improving economies, while those states in COMECON were struggling in a large part due to the cost of the Cold War. Until 1990, the European Community was expanded from 6 founding members to 12. The emphasis placed on resurrecting the West German economy led to it overtaking the UK as Europe's largest economy.

1991–2007: Integration and reunification

With the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1991, the post-socialist states began free market reforms: Poland, Hungary, and Slovenia adopted them reasonably quickly, while Ukraine and Russia are still in the process of doing so.

After East and West Germany were reunited in 1990, the economy of West Germany struggled as it had to support and largely rebuild the infrastructure of East Germany.

By the millennium change, the EU dominated the economy of Europe comprising the five largest European economies of the time namely Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain. In 1999, 12 of the 15 members of the EU joined the Eurozone replacing their former national currencies by the common euro. The three who chose to remain outside the Eurozone were: the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden. The European Union is now the largest economy in the world.[208]

2008–2010: Recession

Figures released by Eurostat in January 2009 confirmed that the Eurozone had gone into recession in the third quarter of 2008.[209] It impacted much of the region.[210] In early 2010, fears of a sovereign debt crisis[211] developed concerning some countries in Europe, especially Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal.[212] As a result, measures were taken, especially for Greece, by the leading countries of the Eurozone.[213]

The EU-27 unemployment rate was 10.3% in April 2012.[214] Recent university graduates have been unable to find work.[215] In April 2012, the unemployment rate in the EU27 for those aged 15–24 was 22.4%.[214]

In 2005, the population of Europe was estimated to be 731 million according to the United Nations,[222] which is slightly more than one-ninth of the world's population. A century ago, Europe had nearly a quarter of the world's population.[223] The population of Europe has grown in the past century, but in other areas of the world (in particular Africa and Asia) the population has grown far more quickly.[222] Among the continents, Europe has a relatively high population density, second only to Asia. The most densely populated country in Europe (and in the world) is Monaco. Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "peoples of Europe", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities.[224] According to UN population projection, Europe's population may fall to about 7% of world population by 2050, or 653 million people (medium variant, 556 to 777 million in low and high variants, respectively).[222] Within this context, significant disparities exist between regions in relation to fertility rates. The average number of children per female of child bearing age is 1.52.[225] According to some sources,[226] this rate is higher among Muslims in Europe. The UN predicts a steady population decline in Central and Eastern Europe as a result of emigration and low birth rates.[227]

Europe is home to the highest number of migrants of all global regions at 70.6 million people, the IOM's report said.[228] In 2005, the EU had an overall net gain from immigration of 1.8 million people. This accounted for almost 85% of Europe's total population growth.[229] The European Union plans to open the job centres for legal migrant workers from Africa.[230][231] In 2008, 696,000 persons were given citizenship of an EU27 member state, a decrease from 707,000 the previous year.[232]

Emigration from Europe began with Spanish and Portuguese settlers in the 16th century,[233][234] and French and English settlers in the 17th century.[235] But numbers remained relatively small until waves of mass emigration in the 19th century, when millions of poor families left Europe.[236]

Slavic languages are most spoken by the number of native speakers in Europe, they are spoken in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Romance languages are spoken primarily in south-western Europe as well as in Romania and Moldova, in Central or Eastern Europe. Germanic languages are spoken in Northern Europe, the British Isles and some parts of Central Europe.[183]

Europe has become a relatively secular continent, with an increasing number and proportion of irreligious, atheist and agnostic people which make up about 18.2% of Europeans population,[240] actually the largest secular in the Western world. There are a particularly high number of self-described non-religious people in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Sweden, former East Germany, and France.[241]

Culture

The culture of Europe can be described as a series of overlapping cultures; cultural mixes exist across the continent. Scholar Andreas Kaplan describes Europe as "embracing maximum cultural diversity at minimal geographical distances".[242] There are cultural innovations and movements, sometimes at odds with each other. Thus, the question of "common culture" or "common values" is complex.

Notes

^ abTransnistria, internationally recognised as being a legal part of the Republic of Moldova, although de facto control is exercised by its internationally unrecognised government which declared independence from Moldova in 1990.

^ Russia is considered a transcontinental country in both Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. People in Russia tend to call the region Northern Eurasia. However only the population figure includes the entire state.

^ abCyprus is physiographically entirely in Southwest Asia but has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures refer to the entire state, including the de facto independent part Northern Cyprus which is not recognised as a sovereign nation by the vast majority of sovereign nations, nor the UN.

^ Area figure for Serbia includes Kosovo, a province that unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008, and whose sovereign status is unclear. Population and density figures are from the first results of 2011 census and are given without the disputed territory of Kosovo.

^Kazakhstan is physiographically considered a transcontinental country, mostly in Central Asia (UN region), partly in Eastern Europe, with European territory west of the Ural Mountains and Ural River. However, only the population figure refers to the entire country.

^Armenia is physiographically entirely in Western Asia, but it has strong historical and sociopolitical connections with Europe. The population and area figures include the entire state respectively.

^Turkey is physiographically considered a transcontinental country, mostly in Western Asia, partly in Eastern Europe. However only the population figure includes the entire state.

^ abcd The total figures for area and population include only European portions of transcontinental countries. The precision of these figures is compromised by the ambiguous geographical extent of Europe and the lack of references for European portions of transcontinental countries.

^Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008. Its sovereign status is unclear. Its population is July 2009 CIA estimate.

^ abAbkhazia and South Ossetia, both generally considered to be entirely within Southwest Asia,[246] unilaterally declared their independence from Georgia on 25 August 1990 and 28 November 1991 respectively. Their status as sovereign nations is not recognised by a vast majority of sovereign nations, nor the UN. Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates respectively.

^Nagorno-Karabakh, generally considered to be entirely within Southwest Asia, unilaterally declared its independence from Azerbaijan on 6 January 1992. Its status as a sovereign nation is not recognised by any sovereign nation, nor the UN. Population figures stated as of 2003 census and 2000 estimates respectively.

References

^Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, with its commercial and historical centre and about two-thirds of the population lying on the European side, and about one-third of its population living on the Asian side of Eurasia.

^Ricardo Duchesne (7 February 2011). The Uniqueness of Western Civilization. BRILL. p. 297. ISBN90-04-19248-4. The list of books which have celebrated Greece as the “cradle” of the West is endless; two more examples are Charles Freeman's The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World (1999) and Bruce Thornton's Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization (2000)

^William J. Duiker; Jackson J. Spielvogel (1 February 2010). The Essential World History. Cengage Learning. p. 330. ISBN978-0-495-90227-0. Retrieved 20 January 2013. The Byzantine Empire also interacted with the world of Islam to its east and the new European civilization of the west. Both interactions proved costly and ultimately fatal.

^Ronald Findlay (2006). Eli Heckscher, International Trade, And Economic History. MIT Press. pp. 178–179. ISBN978-0-262-06251-0. Retrieved 20 January 2013. These Christian allies did not accept the authority of Byzantium, and the Fourth Crusade that sacked Constantinople and established the so-called Latin Empire that lasted until 1261 was a fatal wound from which the empire never recovered until its fall at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1453 (Queller and Madden 1997).

^John Powell (2001). Magill's Guide to Military History: A-Cor. Salem Press. ISBN978-0-89356-015-7. Retrieved 20 January 2013. However, the fifty-seven years of plunder that followed made the Byzantine Empire, even when it retook the capital in 1261, genuinely weak. Beginning in 1222, the empire was further weakened by a civil war that lasted until 1355. ... When the Ottomans overran their lands and besieged Constantinople in 1453, sheer poverty and weakness were the causes of the capital city's final fall.

^Dale T. Irvin (10 January 2002). History of the World Christian Movement: Volume 1: Earliest Christianity To 1453. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 405. ISBN978-0-567-08866-6. Retrieved 20 January 2013. Not only did the fourth crusade further harden the resentments Greek-speaking Christians felt toward the Latin West, but it further weakened the empire of Constantinople, many say fatally so. After the restoration of Greek imperial rule the city survived as the capital of Byzantium for another two centuries, but it never fully recovered.

^William J. Duiker; Jackson J. Spielvogel (1 February 2010). The Essential World History. Cengage Learning. p. 386. ISBN978-0-495-90227-0. Retrieved 20 January 2013. Later they established themselves in the Anatolian peninsula at the expense of the Byzantine Empire. ... The Byzantines, however, had been severely weakened by the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade (in 1204) and the Western occupation of much of the empire for the next half century.

^Chronicles. Rockford Institute. 2005. Retrieved 20 January 2013. ... two-and-a-half centuries to recover from the Fourth Crusade before the Ottomans finally took Constantinople in 1453, ... They fatally wounded Byzantium, which was the main cause of its weakened condition when the Muslim onslaught came. Even on the eve of its final collapse, the precondition for any Western help was submission in Florence.

^W. G. Clarence-Smith (2006). "Islam And The Abolition Of Slavery". Oxford University Press. p.13. ISBN 0-19-522151-6 — "Lands to the north of the Black Sea probably yielded the most slaves to the Ottomans from 1450. A compilation of estimates indicates that Crimean Tartars seized about 1,750,000 Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians from 1468 to 1694."

^The UN Statistics Department [3] places Azerbaijan in Western Asia for statistical convenience [4]: "The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories." The CIA World Factbook[5] places Azerbaijan in South Western Asia, with a small portion north of the Caucasus range in Europe. National Geographic and Encyclopædia Britannica also place Georgia in Asia.